But Williams’ European gamble finally paid off on Tuesday thanks to his good luck charm, Packer’s widow Ros.

The 72-year-old Crown Casino founder doesn’t make it to the track nowadays and watched his fourth Cup win – the others were with local horses – from “the Williams grandstand” at home outside Melbourne. So his son Nick, flanked by Ros, cheered home Williams’s English import and Irish-bred Green Moon – a 20-1 outsider in the $6.2 million race after he failed in the Cox Plate.

“God bless everybody who wrote him off,” said Nick Williams. Facing one of the best fields in history, Green Moon hit the front inside the final 200 metres to beat the Gai Waterhouse-trained import Fiorente and English stayer Jakkalberry.

Williams is one of the biggest spenders on owning and breeding. Renowned writer and former editor Les Carlyon admitted he hadn’t picked the winner, but quipped: “The real story here is it cost Lloyd $20 million to win $3.6 million.”

Prepared by the Williams family’s trainer, Robert Hickmott, Green Moon was ridden by Australian jockey Brett Prebble, who flew from Hong Kong for his first Cup win.

Williams had sensationally dropped Damien Oliver as the rider for the Cup after allegations of illegal betting surfaced against the jockey. Other owners have continued to use Oliver and he won the Victoria Derby last Saturday.

‘ThE MELBOURNE CUP IS HIS DREAM. HE IS A GREAT STRATEGIST’

Nick Williams said the Cup win was special. “Everyone puts in so much time and effort. It’s led by Dad. It’s another ­Melbourne Cup triumph for Team Williams and I’m just ecstatic.

“My phone cut out as I was talking to [my father] but I know he will be over the moon, pardon the pun.“The Melbourne Cup is his dream. He is a great strategist in everything he does and this is the race he wants to win.” Irish-bred horses finished in the first seven places.

The two major wagering com­panies, Tabcorp and Tatts, said they had taken more than $141 million in tote and fixed-odds betting on the Cup, and turnover in the two biggest states of NSW and Victoria was up by 6.5 per cent.The managing director of Eskander Betstar, Alan Eskander, conceded Fiorente would have been a better result for the bookies.

“We had a large [amount held] on Green Moon in futures betting throughout the spring. It’s not the worst result possible, but the punters still did well on this one.”

A long-time horse racing owner, Williams has been one of Melbourne’s most renowned investors and property developers. Hudson Conway, which he formerly owned with Ron Walker, built the city’s Crown Casino.

Williams imported dozens of horses with Kerry Packer in the 1980s, but they never had any joy together with the Melbourne Cup. However, Williams had did land a Cup winner with Efficient in 2007, and he was also a part-owner of What a Nuisance (1985) and Just a Dash (1981).

He has bought more than 100 progeny of the great New Zealand sire Zabeel in pursuit of the Cup and landed a major betting plunge with Packer when Jezabeel won in 1998.

Williams and Packer pioneered the trend of choosing European stayers, buying more than 40 of them between 1986 to 1990.

DECision on americain rider will come under scrutiny

The highly fancied previous winners Americain, the race favourite, and Dunaden were never in the race and finished well back.

The decision to let Oliver ride Americain will come under heavy scrutiny in coming days, but he received a good reception from the crowd after winning the race before the Cup. Americain co-owner Gerry Ryan had defended employing Oliver, saying the investigation “has not been a distraction”.

Prebble said that winning the Cup was his life’s dream. “I was never going to get beat. I got a severe check 250 metres after the start and it put me back on the fence and he was on and off the bridle.”

Fiorente ($31), which finished a length behind the winner, was the third Cup runner-up for Waterhouse, who previously trained Te Akau Nick (1993) and Nothin’ Leica Dane in 1995.

Fiorente part-owner and syndicate manager GUD Holdings chairman Ross Herron, hailed it as a great day to score second and sixth places with Fiorente and Glencadam Gold, having entered horses in the Melbourne Cup each of the past three years. “We’ll collect $1.25 million for this – not bad for 2nd and 6th,” Herron quipped.

Fiorente was purchased overseas and only arrived in the country a few weeks ago; the Melbourne Cup was the horse’s first race in Australia.

Herron has just bought a handful of horses from the Newmarket sales in England, saying “unfortunately, if you want stayers you have to go overseas – we don’t breed stayers any more. Australians are all chasing the money in two-year-olds.”Waterhouse was happy with the result despite being second: “He [Fiorente] can only improve. Eight second [placings] are better than eight 10ths . . . you look at my bank account,” she said.The well-travelled Jakkalberry ($81) was a further one and a quarter lengths away in third place.

The 2012 Cup attracted about 106,162 people to the Flemington racecourse, where grey skies and humidity greeted the star guests, Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, who presented the trophy to Nick Williams, as Ros Packer watched on.